Listen To the First Track Off Thom Yorke’s ‘Suspiria’ Score

You can’t talk about the original Suspiria without talking about its iconic, demented score. The hypnotic chimes and the demonic growls of Goblin’s score are as essential to Dario Argento’s 1977 horror film as the vivid color scheme is – the theme is one of my personal horror favorites. But when Luca Guadagnino decided to make his own version of Suspiria, he knew the score had to be a whole new beast.

Enter Thom Yorke. Guadagnino’s Suspiria marks the first film score composed by the Radiohead singer, and you can bet it sounds nothing like Goblin’s electronic score. That doesn’t mean he didn’t borrow some inspiration from it. Luckily, we won’t have to wait until the film hits theaters to get a taste now that Yorke has shared the first track online. Titled “Suspirium,” this plays over the film’s end credits, according to Indiewire, and features some hypnotic visuals.

Yorke recently told Rolling Stone that he was inspired by Goblin’s use of repeating motifs to build tension in the original score. “There’s a way of repeating in music that can hypnotize. I kept thinking to myself that it’s a form of making spells,” he told the magazine. Given that the new movie is get in 1977 Berlin, Yorke’s score is also influenced by Krautrock, a form of experimental rock that originated in Germany in the ‘60s. Into it!

The new track is definitely miles away from the Goblin score, much more elegiac and dreamy, but I really like it. And let’s not forget it plays at the end of the film, so the rest is likely more intense. Don’t get up and leave when you hear it in the theater though; there’s a post-credits scene! Another thing you definitely don’t want to do when you see Suspiria: text in the theater. Some crazy person in the Venice audience decided to look at their phone during the entire film’s premiere, which Guadagnino angrily vented about in a recent interview with the Associated Press (via USA Today). Be careful – if you text during Suspiria Tilda Swinton’s ghost will haunt you for the rest of your life. Wait, that actually sounds amazing, ignore that.